The nearer their hearts drew to one another the more studiously did they address each other as "monsieur" and "mademoiselle"; but they could not help their eyes smiling and their glances meeting, and it seemed to them that new and better feelings were entering their hearts, making them ready to love and take an interest in things they had before cared nothing about.
When they returned from their walk they found that the baron had gone to a cave formed in the cliff, called the Chambre aux Desmoiselles, so they waited for him at the inn, where he did not appear till five o'clock, and then they started to go home. The boat glided along so smoothly that it hardly seemed to be moving; the wind came in gentle puffs filling the sail one second only to let it flap loosely against the mast the next, and the tired sun was slowly approaching the sea. The stillness around made them all silent for a long while, but at last Jeanne said:
"How I should like to travel!"
"Yes, but it would be rather dull traveling alone," said the vicomte. "You want a companion to whom you could confide your impressions."
"That is true," she answered thoughtfully; "still, I like to go for long walks alone. When there is no one with me I build such castles in the air."
"But two people can better still plan out a happy future," he said, looking her full in the face.
Her eyes fell; did he mean anything? She gazed at the horizon as though she would look beyond it; then she said slowly:
"I should like to go to Italy—and to Greece—and to Corsica, it must be so wild and so beautiful there."
He preferred the chalets and lakes of Switzerland.
She said: "No, I should like to go either to a country with little or no history like Corsica, or else to one with very old associations like Greece. It must be so interesting to find the traces of those nations whose history one has known from childhood, and to see the places where such great and noble deeds were done."